The Faculty Innovation Center ( FIC) is dedicated to enabling exceptional engineering education at The University of Texas. The FIC provides media, instructional, and faculty development services to support faculty in enhancing their teaching, both with and without technology.
As the focal point for teaching and learning issues within the College, the FIC is an integral part of engineering education at UT. The FIC’s core purpose resonates with the College’s key strategic goals, which include promoting quality instruction and supporting faculty in becoming innovative instructors. The FIC provides leadership in developing creative teaching solutions and continually pioneers new and effective ways to apply technology to instruction.
Taking a collaborative approach to working with faculty, the FIC crafts unique and highly targeted solutions to respond to the individual needs of engineering faculty. The FIC has twelve staff members with a diverse skill set to meet a full spectrum of instructional needs. Areas of expertise include instructional design, web development, graphic design, 3D visualization, video production, programming, distance learning, project management, and more.
Funding for the FIC is made possible by students’ Instructional Technology Fees and by additional revenue projects. Engineering faculty have access to the FIC and its resources, however the FIC charges for services supporting research and other non-direct instruction activities.
Mechanical Engineering professor Phil Schmidt is acknowledged as the founding father of the Faculty Innovation Center (FIC), which evolved from an earlier incarnation known as the Instructional Media Lab (IML). Bridging the gap between real-world engineering practices and traditional engineering education provided the impetus for establishing the IML. In earlier days when classes were smaller, professors took students on field trips, for example to a power plant. As class sizes grew, it became less feasible to do field trips with larger numbers of students. So the idea emerged to bring the power plant to the students.
In 1994, Dr. Schmidt and Dr. Jack Howell received an NSF grant to develop a series of videotapes for thermodynamics. Because thermodynamics can be rather dry and abstract, the project goal was to make the subject matter more alive and dynamic by brining in lots of examples. The IML was established when Jason Simon was hired with NSF funding to do video production. Jason served as a jack-of-all-trades and did a good job of getting the IML started, using borrowed and surplused equipment to meet the needs of the project. The thermodynamics video project was very labor-intensive. Student graphic artists developed animations in a slow, frame-by-frame process. The first product of the IML was this series of seven 30-minute videotapes, which were sold to over 100 schools and may still be in use across the country. Several years later, Dr. Schmidt and Dr. Ofodike Ezekoye received another NFS grant to develop web-based materials to teach thermodynamics, extending the need for the IML and the range of technical capability. Segments of the original videos were integrated into the web-based materials, so the legacy of the original IML project continues to support student learning.
The scope of the IML grew to the point that managing it became a burden to Dr. Schmidt. By this time, the College was providing financial support for the IML to build its capacity and expand the range of services to other departments. In 1999, upon Dr. Schmidt’s recommendation, the IML was taken into the Office of Academic Affairs. A short time later, Dr. Kathy Schmidt came on board as director of the FIC. The name was changed to the Faculty Innovation Center (FIC), reflecting a new emphasis on instructional enhancement either with or without media. The FIC grew rapidly, engaging many more faculty members and providing various services to the College. Today, media development is still a core capability, but the FIC also provides distance learning support, faculty development services, teaching consultation, student assessment, project evaluation, and more. From humble beginnings as a simple table-top video production project, the FIC has become an integral part of Engineering education at UT.